Aegon I invaded the Seven Kingdoms with his sister-wives (wisters) and dragons. One less discussed (at least to me) is the likelihood of a contentious relationship between his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys. In this post I would like to explore that relationship and also see if we can make any connections between Visenya and Rhaenys' death.

Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen: A look at their relationship as Aegon's sisters/wives

Description/Background

Both dragonriders, this quote describes their appearances, but also mentions the likelihood of competition between the two:

Visenya is a year or two older than Aegon, Rhaenys a year or two younger. They share his silver-gold hair, but theirs is worn long. Visenya often braided her hair or bound it up in rings, while Rhaenys wore hers loose and flowing. Both are warriors and dragonriders in their own rights, but their personalities are much different. Visenya is both stern and sensual, more voluptuous than her sister, more passionate, but with a dark and unforgiving side. Rhaenys, the younest of the three, is slender and graceful, playful, with a mischievous aspect to her personality than Visenya lacks. Rhaenys is the flirt, Visenya the seductress. Although they share their brother Aegon between them, they compete for him too, each in her own way.... The sisters would be likely to wear jewels and clothing that reflected the dragon and fire motifs...
I might also add that Visenya is the most likely of the two to garb herself as a warrior, and when so garbed, she would wield the Valyrian longsword Dark Sister, whose slender blade is designed for a woman's hand -SSM, More Targaryen Descriptions: 24 December 2005

Another descriptive quote about the sibling throuple that again mentions some possible contention:

Visenya, eldest of the three siblings, was as much a warrior as Aegon himself, as comfortable in ringmail as in silk. She carried the Valyrian longsword Dark Sister, and was skilled in its use, having trained beside her brother since childhood. Though possessed of the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of Valyria, hers was a harsh, austere beauty. Even those who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, unforgiving, and some said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.
Rhaenys, youngest of the three Targaryens, was all her sister was not: playful, curious, impulsive, given to flights of fancy. No true warrior, Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer, mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys spent more time on dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for above all things she loved to fly. She once was heard to say that before she died she meant to fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay upon its western shores. Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya's fidelity to her brother/husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights when Aegon was with her elder sister. Yet despite these rumors, observers at court could not fail to note that the king spent ten nights with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya.
Aegon Targaryen himself, strangely, was as much an enigma to his contemporaries as to us. Armed with the Valyrian steel blade Blackfyre, he was counted amongst the greatest warriors of his age, yet he took no pleasure in feats of arms and never rode in tourney or mêlée. His mount was Balerion the Black Dread, but he flew only to battle, or to travel swiftly across land and sea. His commanding presence drew men to his banners, yet he had no close friends, save Orys Baratheon, the companion of his youth. Women were drawn to him, but Aegon remained ever faithful to his sisters. As king, he put great trust in his small council and his sisters, leaving much of the day-to-day governance of the realm to them...yet did not hesitate to take command when he found it necessary. Though he dealt harshly with rebels and traitors, he was open-handed with former foes who bent the knee. -TWOIAF, The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

More possible reasons for Visenya's jealousy:

As the city and its prosperity grew, so did that of the realm. This was in part due to the Conqueror's efforts to win the respect of his vassals and that of the smallfolk. In this, he was often aided by Queen Rhaenys (whilst she lived), for whom the smallfolk were of special concern. She was likewise a patron to singers and bards—something her sister, Queen Visenya, thought a waste, but those singers made songs of praise for the Targaryens and carried them throughout the realm. And if those songs also contained bold lies that made Aegon and his sisters seem all the more glorious, the queen did not rue it...although the maesters might.
The queen also did much to bring the realm together through the marriages she arranged between far-flung houses. Thus, Rhaenys's death in Dorne in 10 AC, and the wrath that followed it, was felt by much of the realm, who had loved the beautiful, kindhearted queen. -TWOIAF, The Targaryen Kings: Aegon I

Their relationship had enough drama that a play was made about it:

The mummers off the Ship showed her how a hero stands, and taught her speeches from The Song of the Rhoyne, The Conqueror's Two Wives, and The Merchant's Lusty Lady. -AFFC, Cat of the Canals

Visenya was also known to dabble in black magic/the higher mysteries:

Even those who loved her best found Visenya stern, serious, unforgiving, and some said that she played with poisons and dabbled in dark sorceries.

She/Tyanna of the Tower healed resurrected Maegor after 30 days of being in a coma since his Trial of the Seven.

Aenys I's Death

Visenya is considered a prime suspect in Rhaeny's son Aenys' death:

In the face of all this, Aenys abandoned the city with his family and fled to the safety of Dragonstone. There, Visenya counseled him to take his dragons and bring fire and blood to both the Starry Sept and the Sept of Remembrance. Instead, the king, who was incapable of making a firm decision, fell ill, with painful cramps wracking his stomach and loose bowels. By the end of 41 AC, most of the realm had turned against him. Thousands of Poor Fellows prowled the roads, threatening the king's supporters, and dozens of lords took up arms against the Iron Throne. Though Aenys was only five-and-thirty, it was said that he looked more like a man of sixty, and Grand Maester Gawen despaired of improving his condition.
The dowager Queen Visenya took over his care, and for a time he improved. And then, quite suddenly, he suffered a collapse when he learned that his son and daughter were besieged in Crakehall Castle, where they had taken refuge when their yearly progress was interrupted by the uprising against the throne. He died three days later, and like his father before him, was burned on Dragonstone, after the fashion of the Valyrians of old.
In later days, after Visenya's death, it was suggested that King Aenys's sudden demise was Visenya's doing, and some spoke of her as a kinslayer and kingslayer. Did she not prefer Maegor over Aenys in all things? Did she not have the ambition that her son should rule? Why, then, did she tend to her stepson and nephew when she seemed disgusted with him? Visenya was many things, but a woman capable of pity never seemed to be one of them. It is a question that cannot be readily dismissed...nor readily answered. -TWOIAF, The Targaryen Kings: Aenys I

Rhaenys' Death

Looking at Visenya's character, the love triangle she was in and the fact that she likely was involved in Rhaenys' son's death (years later), we have to ask if she was also involved in Rhaenys' death.

Here is what we know of Rhaenys' death in Dorne:

So again the Targaryens turned to their dragons, unleashing their fury upon Starfall and Skyreach and Hellholt. It was at Hellholt where the Dornish had their greatest success against the Targaryens. A bolt from a scorpion pierced the eye of Meraxes, and the great dragon and the queen who rode upon it fell from the sky. In her death throes, the dragon destroyed the castle's highest tower and part of the curtain wall. Queen Rhaenys's body was never returned to King's Landing.
Whether Rhaenys Targaryen outlived her dragon remains a matter of dispute. Some say that she lost her seat and fell to her death, others that she was crushed beneath Meraxes in the castle yard. A few accounts claim the queen survived her dragon's fall, only to die a slow death by torment in the dungeons of the Ullers. The true circumstances of her demise will likely never be known, but the histories record that Rhaenys Targaryen, sister and wife to King Aegon I, perished at the Hellholt in Dorne in the tenth year After the Conquest.

With Aegon/Visenya's response:

The two years that followed were later called the years of the Dragon's Wroth. Grief-stricken at the death of their beloved sister, King Aegon and Queen Visenya set ablaze every castle, keep, and holdfast in Dorne at least once...save for Sunspear and the shadow city. Why this is so remains a matter of conjecture. In Dorne, it was said the Targaryens feared that Princess Meria had some cunning means of slaying dragons, something she had purchased from Lys. Likelier, however, is Archmaester Timotty's suggestion in his Conjectures that the Targaryens hoped to turn the rest of the Dornish, who suffered so much destruction, against the Martells, who were spared. If this is true, it may explain the letters dispatched from the marches to the Dornish houses, urging them to surrender and claiming that the Martells had betrayed them by buying their safety from the Targaryens at the expense of the rest of Dorne. -TWOIAF, Dorne: Dorne Against the Dragons

• It should also be noted that it states that Visenya was grief-stricken (in a very generic way).

The Letter

Swayed by such considerations, it is said, King Aegon was determined to refuse the offer until Princess Deria placed in his hands a private letter from her father, Prince Nymor. Aegon read it upon the Iron Throne, and men say that when he rose, his hand was bleeding, so hard had he clenched it. He burned the letter and departed immediately on Balerion's back for Dragonstone. When he returned the next morning, he agreed to the peace and signed a treaty to that effect.
What the letter contained, none know to this day, though many have speculated. Did Nymor reveal that Rhaenys lived still, broken and mutilated, and that he would end her suffering if Aegon ended hostilities? Was the letter ensorcelled? Did he threaten to take all the wealth of Dorne to hire the Faceless Men to kill Aegon's young son and heir, Aenys? These questions shall never be answered, it seems. -TWOIAF, Dorne: Dorne Against the Dragons

The usual suspects (its theorized about a decent amount) about the contents of the letter are:

• Faceless Men
• Doomsday Device
• Dragonslaying Weapon
• Injured/Tortured Rhaenys
• Ensorcelled letter

While keeping in mind the fact that they could have come across information about Aenys' parenthood and sent Aegon some form of proof:

But though his father and brother, Maegor (who was Visenya's child), were both warriors born, Aenys was made of different stuff. He had begun life as a weak and sickly infant and remained so throughout his earliest years. Rumors abounded that this could be no true son of Aegon the Conqueror, who had been a warrior without peer. In fact, it was well-known that Queen Rhaenys delighted in handsome singers and witty mummers; perhaps one of these might have fathered the child. But the rumors dampened and eventually died when the sickly child was given a young hatchling who was named Quicksilver. And as the dragon grew, so too did Aenys.
Still, Aenys remained a dreamer, a dabbler in alchemy, a patron of singers and mummers and mimes. Moreover, he hungered too much for approval, and this led him to dither and hesitate over his decisions for fear of disappointing one side or another. It was this flaw that most marred his reign and brought him to an early and ignominious end. -TWOIAF, The Targaryen Kings Aegon I

and:

Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya's fidelity to her brother/husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights when Aegon was with her elder sister.

There are definitely theories that Aegon was infertile and that Maegor isn't his either (since Maegor wasn't borne until after Rhaenys' death) as well.

Last Piece of "Evidence"

According to the history of Archmaester Gyldayn, it was suggested at court that Aegon left Queen Visenya in charge of building the Red Keep so that he would not have to endure her presence on Dragonstone. In their later years, their relationship—never a warm one to begin with—had grown even more distant. -TWOIAF, The Targaryen Kings: Aegon I

Written by Gyldayn (directly by GRRM), while its possible this could be due to other factors, it would make a ton of sense as to why Aegon became angry with Visenya.

Thoughts/Theories

• There is no real information tying Visenya to Rhaenys' death outside of the circumstantial. But it should be noted how motivated she probably was to do it.
• It should also be noted that she had a contentious relationship with other "queens"/women in power when Maegor was ruled by his "three queens" (his mother, his wife Alys Harroway and his new wife Tyanna of the Tower).
• I don't think a threat (Faceless Men/Dragon killing weapon) would have worked. Aegon would have just burned all of Dorne including sunspear. While it could hae been proof of Rhaneys infidelity/Aenys' parenthood (which would have angered Aegon since he loved Rhaenys more than Visenya and wouldn't want that info getting out)
• Even if it was just some type of weapon, it doesn't exclude the fact (while also recognizing there is absolutely zero evidence for this) that Rhaenys might have still been culpable

TLDR: Visenya and Rhaenys had a much more contentious relationship than it seems and while there is no direct evidence, there are several circumstantial links between Visenya and Rhaenys' death.